


She Remembers Everything

by PrincessBethoc



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, Family, Short
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-23 16:43:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17083994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessBethoc/pseuds/PrincessBethoc
Summary: ‘I didn’t know her then, my enemy, my treasured friendOutside this waking dream, she remembers everythingI don’t know her now, my bitter pill, my broken vowThis girl, this bird who sings, she remembers everything.’A series of three loosely connected one shots.





	1. All The Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> Three chapters, loosely connected, set to the two verses and chorus of the song 'She Remembers Everything' by Rosanne Cash.

** ‘Who knows who she used to be before it all went dark?  **  
** Was she like a streak of fire, a painted glass, a beating heart?  **  
** All the mirrors, all the smoke, charades of Valentines **  
** Versions of the third degree, yours and hers and mine.’ **

Before the darkness descended, Zelda Spellman had been another woman. She had been…well, she’s not sure she can truly recall that woman these days. She knows that girl had, at some point, existed. She knows that sister was far better than the sister she is now, and that the mother that version of herself would have made is far better than anything her current self can even begin to dream of.

That woman had known who she was, and Satan have mercy on anyone who crossed her. Her old self had shown no mercy. Or maybe she had been more merciful, but doubted the decision to show mercy far less often than she does now. How can Zelda truly know?

Every mirror lies to her. She cannot reconcile who she sees with who she knows. They lie because she lies to them, and all they can show her is what she shows them. They cannot produce truth from lies, but Zelda doesn’t know how to show them the truth.

No. That in itself is a lie. She stares at her own reflection, at the mirror to which she lies, and can suddenly understand that she’s got it all wrong. It isn’t that she doesn’t know how to show it the truth. Zelda is too _frightened_ to show it any truth. The possibility of who – _what_ – might stare back at her is so cripplingly terrifying that she cannot present any other self than this one to the mirror on the wall.

“Auntie Zee?” a voice calls from the door. It startles Zelda into a haste to replace her mask of diligent perfection. “Is everything okay? You’ve been looking in the mirror for-”

“I’m fine, thank you, dear niece.” As the words tumble from her lips, Zelda tears her gaze away from her reflection. From the failure who masquerades as a woman with a brilliant mind and a deeply held religion.

“Aunt Hilda’s making some tea downstairs.”

Zelda turns and smiles at Sabrina; she follows her niece to the kitchen without a word. She lets Sabrina lead her, distracted as she is by the ghost of her reflection. Is that the woman she once was, or the woman she pretends to be now? Has she played the part so long that she cannot break character, even before a mirror?

She prays to Satan it never happens, but Sabrina might end up like her Aunt Zelda. She tiptoes so precariously on the edge of every excruciating lesson, it does nothing but shred her nerves to watch her flounder, and it breaks Zelda to leave her niece to learn the painful way. She can only do it if she reminds herself every single time that she does this for Sabrina’s own sake. Even as she brutally scolds Sabrina, as she leaves her to navigate the cruellest moments for herself, Zelda does it because she truly does believe it’s what Sabrina needs from her. The touchy-feely nonsense has always been Hilda’s department of expertise; it’s one of those many areas in which Zelda can recognise she is severely lacking.

Unwilling as she is to admit it, Sabrina is just like Zelda had been as a much, much younger woman. Perhaps not as studious or as religious as Zelda, but as headstrong and as unyielding, most definitely. Each time Zelda berates Sabrina, she berates herself for ever being like that. For the mere possibility that she may had subconsciously taught her niece to be like her. How can she have inflicted a path of such difficulty upon the closest thing she’s ever had to a child of her own?

And as she crosses through her home to join her sister, her niece and her nephew for tea, Zelda Spellman passes one more mirror.

She stops.

She looks.

She remembers the woman she had wanted to be when she was just a girl. Just a fragile child like Sabrina.

She has never become that woman.

The Zelda Spellman she wants to be would not lie to the mirror.


	2. At Night, In the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Christmas!

**‘I didn’t know her then, my enemy, my treasured friend**   
**Outside this waking dream, she remembers everything**   
**I don’t know her now, my bitter pill, my broken vow**   
**This girl, this bird who sings, she remembers everything.’**

Zelda Spellman doesn’t think of herself as an enemy to anyone. She’s only on the Earth to keep her family where they ought to be. To keep them on the right path. To keep them safe in the dark. In the night, in the dark, where the monsters come out to play, it’s up to Zelda to be their guide. Even on the Path of Night, nobody can grope around in the dark while the worst of all the world rises to the surface.

The only person to whom she may be an enemy is herself. Her own best friend – often her only friend – but her worst enemy too. Her own harshest critic. When she’s at her lowest, nobody hates Zelda Spellman like she hates herself.

Her life feels surreal. Events take place, but she doesn’t take it in. She takes in the fact. She can see the black and the white, and even the grey in between. It’s the colour that can never seep into the cracks. It’s the fear and the relief and the laughter and the kindness that never reaches into her soul. It is there. She feels it. She feels it all. Just never as hard as everyone else seems to. The waters remain almost still, mere ripples under the ice when she knows the water should shatter the ice.

If somebody were to ask her about the day Sabrina was born or the day Edward and Diana died or the day of her own Dark Baptism, Zelda would be able to recount the most minute detail. The pitch of Sabrina’s first cry. The exact time of the day news reached her that her brother had died. The precise words she uttered at her Dark Baptism. She can say how she knows she is meant to have felt. She can say the words and she can read them like words from a book, but she cannot bring the emotions back to the surface. She wants to – oh, how Zelda wants to feel things as deeply as she knows she should – and she can remember it all. Every little detail. Every word, every gesture, every moment…but not every feeling. Those are too difficult to drag back to the surface.

And at night, in the dark, Zelda mulls it all over as her sister sleeps in the next bed. At night, in the dark, it comes back to her. Not who she is or who she was, but what she does and what she has done. What she says and what she has said. What everyone else is and says and does and feels; then she tries to find her memories of her emotions, of how she feels and how she felt, and she cannot feel it. Zelda can only feel it once, and then she can never truly feel that moment again.

So, her mind runs itself ragged finding something else. Lessons and books and conversations and promises. Every promise she has made and every promise she has kept and every promise she has broken and…and…and it turns her stomach.

It turns her stomach into a pit of despair. On the worst nights, the shame of her own failings burns in her throat, leaving her to lie in her bed with her heart in her mouth, terrified that Hilda will hear a broken breath or a feeble whimper.

All because she lies to her own sister and yet expects Hilda to somehow know who Zelda is. It’s just like the mirror. There can be no truth to come out of a pipeline of lies.

Safety is to get out of bed and carefully leave the room. Safety is to go down to the kitchen and cry where nobody can see or hear her. Safety is to endure it alone. After all, it’s all her own doing. She knows she is so tightly closed off that nobody can see her. If not for her vocal opinions and her intelligence, she fears she might be invisible.

One day she may lose all of that. If she loses her talent and her looks and her voice then one day, her family, her community, will wake up and they will not see her. If she could find her heart, she’s sure it would be broken.

When it first broke, Zelda cannot say. Was it when Edward died? Or before that? Hilda is so openly kind and warm, and Zelda feels so cold and cruel and constantly filled with doubt. They’ve come from the same place, lost the same brother, raised the same niece – so surely the problem is Zelda herself, not all the events and traumas she can remember.

Too exhausted to even think about it anymore, Zelda breaks into Hilda’s supply of sleep potion and takes just a drop. Just enough for a dreamless sleep, where she can hide until the morning. Because at night, in the dark, Zelda Spellman remembers everything…and she remembers nothing. **  
**


End file.
